A pro-Russian rebel stands at a block-post on the outskirts of Donetsk near a bullet riddled bus, eastern Ukraine, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014, where at least 12 militiamen fighting alongside government troops against pro-Russian separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine have been killed in an ambush, a spokesman for their radical nationalist movement said Wednesday. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

MOSCOW — Confusion enveloped an enormous Russian aid convoy as it apparently halted Wednesday at a military base in the southern Russian city of Voronezh, temporarily suspending its march toward southeastern Ukraine.

At the very least, the two countries seemed headed toward a standoff, with Russia saying it still expected the hundreds of trucks to be allowed across the border and Ukraine vowing that they would be barred. As the crisis deepened, the European Union’s foreign ministers scheduled an emergency meeting for Friday.

Amid the uncertainty, there was no clear statement from Russia about where the trucks were headed, and rumors began to fly that they would bypass the original point of entry, the Shebekino crossing, near Kharkiv, Ukraine, and head farther south to an area closer to Luhansk, where Russia and the separatist fighters it supports exert more control.

That would raise the possibility of the trucks entering the country against the express warnings of Kiev and without the contents being examined by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which Russia has pledged to have oversee the aid delivery.

The Russian government maintained that the convoy was still heading to Ukraine — although exactly where it would not say — and still working under the umbrella of the International Red Cross, despite statements to the contrary from the organization.

“It is moving in the territory of the Russian Federation; it is still moving,” Dmitri Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, told Russian reporters.

The dispute over the convoy comes as Kiev is bearing down militarily on the separatist rebels — one of whose leaders, Igor Strelkov, was badly wounded Wednesday, Russian news media reported — forcing many of them to retreat into the region’s two major cities, Donetsk and Luhansk, which they control.

Shelling there and elsewhere in the region by the Ukrainian forces has taken a heavy toll on civilians, with the death toll in the war doubling in the past week to more than 2,000, the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported Wednesday.

Conditions in Luhansk, under siege by Ukrainian government forces, are particularly dire. City officials said Tuesday that its 250,000 residents had been living without power, water and a sewage system since Aug. 3 and that only essential food was available.

Nevertheless, both Kiev and its Western allies have warned that the Russian aid convoy was just a ploy to get much-needed military assistance to rebel fighters in Luhansk, who are running low on ammunition, or — in the worst case — the first step in an invasion of southeastern Ukraine.

But for the moment, the 260 or so trucks in the convoy appeared to be idling at a military base in Voronezh, about 200 miles east of the Ukrainian border. They had stopped for the night there after leaving Moscow early Tuesday.

Presuming the convoy does end up at the Shebekino crossing in Kharkiv, there were still issues to be worked through. Russia and Ukraine said they were expecting the International Committee of the Red Cross to handle the logistics of the delivery, but officials from the group said the two governments had to agree first on the inspection of the goods and their transfer — if indeed they are transferred — to other vehicles for transport to Luhansk.

“The Russians and the Ukrainians have not agreed on the first step,” said Pascal Cuttat, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Moscow. Once the aid material had been inspected and cleared for entry into Ukraine, the Red Cross could take responsibility for it, he said.

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